LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS 



rightly, Buena Ventura. In old times, any 

 visitor at the Pulaski used to find his way there, 

 and was richly repaid for the visit. There 

 was no proper "keeping" to the grounds. You 

 passed in under a lumbering* old gateway of 

 unhewn timber; the paths were not carefully 

 tended ; there was much of rampant and almost 

 indecorous undergrowth; the tombs were 

 mossy, and the graves, many of them, sunken ; 

 but great live-oaks over-reached your path, 

 and from their gnarled limbs hung swaying 

 pennants of that weird gray moss of the 

 Southern swamp lands — festooned, tangled, 

 streaming down — now fluttering in a light 

 breeze, and again drooping, as if with the 

 weight of woe, to the very earth. There was 

 something mysteriously solemn and grave-like 

 in it. The gnarled oaks and the slowly sway- 

 ing plumes of gray told the completest possible 

 story of the place. Had there been no tombs 

 there, you would have said that it was the place 

 of places where tombs should lie and the dead 

 sleep. I have alluded to the scene only to show 

 what and how much may be done by foliage 

 and tree limbs, with their investing mosses, to 

 give character to such a spot. 



Neither the live-oak nor the Spanish moss is 

 available, indeed, in our Northern latitudes; 



225 



